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Lleida – Alguaire Airport

Site

Lleida-Alguaire (España)

Client

Dirección General de aeropuertos. Generalitat de Catalunya. GISA

Gross Area

7.232 m²

Date

2010

Status

Built

Collaborator

Aertec y ALG

PHOtos

The program includes a terminal building, the control tower and two areas devoted to garages. The project is aimed at joining the three programs in one look searching for a balance between avoiding the landing of a strange artifact over Lleida countryside and not losing the reference character of the landscape. A big cover simulating a continuous mantle covers the building unifying its different functions and structures, folding up at both sides of the control tower and designing the vertical module.
On the clean and extensive area of the land, fragmented only by the hues of the different colors at its same level, the usual formal metaphors referring to the wings, the birds or the aerodynamics and technology fields are not seen. In this case the finishing combination, vegetable, wood and lacquered micro-drilled metal sheet, gives textures and nuances which take influence from the near agricultural surroundings of Lleida and links the airport to the land. The transfer, on a different scale and normalized, of the colors of the plots in the town of Alguaire on the buildingDBC##1s cover and the facade does not try to be a camouflage, but it is rather a direct allusion to the landDBC##1s character, to its identity. A weathering steel sheet edge wraps the thickness of the cover sheets, the structure and the false ceiling in order to picture the thick plan designed over the facades.
The terminal building, serving as a passage for the users from the land to the sky and vice-versa, is designed in one floor in order to unify the influx of users on one level. The main hall benefits from the highest level available, the lighting created by the undulation of the stripes of the cover and the visual relation with the outside surroundings to link the different spaces and guide the passenger.
A glazed curtain wall rising from the ground to the ceiling demarcates the passenger area. A support system at the upper side opens the field of vision at the user´s level. The big corbels, together with efficient solar control windows, guarantee optimum solar protection which does not require additional elements. On the other side, two opaque technical modules, which are solid volumes sheltered by the upper cover, accommodate the rooms that have to be separated from the clear spaces.
The control tower, 42 meters high, architecturally embodies and integrates the projects of the terminal and the annex buildings with the fold of the cover. A translucent double layer blends and protects the inner cavities. The upper control cab, a unit of predetermined and invariable geometry, is accepted as one more technical element.